


Let down by the ones before

by Changed_For_Good (orphan_account)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Abuse Mentions, Both Sanvers and Supercorp are main ships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Fluffy, Hurt/Comfort, Mon-El is only mentioned, Physical Violence mentions, This is low-key a big fuck you to the supergirl writers btw, nerf war, there is no actual abuse or violence in this fic, this started as a lighthearted fluff fic but apparently I'm still too mad at the writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 02:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9945539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Changed_For_Good
Summary: Lena and Kara visit Alex and Maggie for a quiet games night, and Kara plans to make an announcement. But their plans change drastically when there is shouting and smashing coming from their apartment...





	

Lena grabbed both of Kara's hands on their approach to Alex's apartment. She didn't need to be the one with superpowers to tell how tense and worried Kara was, or how fast her heart was beating. Kara sighed and leaned into Lena's touch, accepting the hug when Lena wrapped her arms around her, gently kissing her hairline.  
"Kara, please don't tell them if you're not ready, baby." Lena whispered, holding Kara close. Kara nestled her face into the crook of Lena's neck and sighed shakily.  
"I am. Ready, I mean, I just... god I'm so scared she'll be angry, Lena." Kara whispered, and Lena just held her tighter because Lena _knew_ how scared she was. She had been terrified since the beginning, even when she was with Mon-El to hide her feelings. Even more so when people began to point out his unsavoury behaviour towards her. It took so many people, Lena, Alex, Maggie, Lucy, James, Winn, Lyra and even Cat to convince her that she deserved better than a man who tried to control her, who made her feel like a weakness, or a burden.

She didn't deserve to be someone's Kryptonite, she deserved to be someone's Hero.

And of course, Lena had been there all along. Before, when she showered Kara with compliments and affection for just being her friend. During, when she made sure Kara knew that there were people who loved her regardless, and whilst Mon-El tried to fill her head with thoughts of not being good enough, being too reckless, too selfish, too close to her friends, too dependent on her family, Lena was there whispering the opposite on the rare occasion that he would actually let Kara visit her alone. 

And then afterwards. When Kara sobbed for hours after she'd told him she didn't want him any more, when she'd told him that he had been abusive. Once she'd finally found the strength to tell him that _she deserved better_ , Lena was there holding her. Always as a friend, never asking anything in return when she dropped three important meetings to sit with Kara, to make sure she ate. 

Until it stopped being as a friend, because there are things friends do together, and there are things friends don't. The regular dinner dates in the following weeks were excusable, plenty of friends take each other to nice places to eat. The unconditional love and support could have always just been platonic, surely. But right from the very beginning, flooding someone's office with flowers seemed a little more on the romantic side, especially when Mxyzptlk did it just a few days later in hopes of wooing her. And if that wasn't enough, perhaps making out in the same office a few months later after _finally_ realising just how many sapphic feelings you've been pushing down every time you see the girl you thought you were just friends with tends to be a little more on the romantic side. Maybe.

And Kara was terrified again, now, because all of those sapphic feelings had surfaced and come pouring out, and she'd kissed Lena Luthor, and realised that she never wanted to stop. So now, Lena and Kara had been dating for three months and Kara was still afraid to tell Alex because the liking girls thing was _her_ thing, and had been since she'd come out. It was supposed to be Alex finding herself, it was the one thing that had been just about Alex, and Kara felt as though she was intruding. Because even though she's bisexual, not a lesbian like Alex, she was still with a girl. And once again, she felt as though she was ruthlessly stealing the spotlight from Alex.

"You know how much she loves you, Kara. How much it killed her to see you being pushed down by Manhell." Lena assured her girlfriend, smiling when she giggled against her neck over the nickname Lena used for Kara's ex whenever he was mentioned. Because he was still around, still in National City, and as much as Lena wished he had never gone near Kara and never would again, she was not about to confront him and treat Kara like a possession she needed to defend. No, she knew that Kara could more than fend for herself. So she kept her distaste for him between them, and let Kara decide which fights Lena fought with her.

Because, of course, if Kara _wanted_ her to punch him in the face, she would have no objections. 

"I know, Lena." Kara smiled, feeling slightly better.  
"I am so proud of you, Kara Danvers, you super-woman, you." Lena grinned, and Kara grinned back.  
"Lets go see Alex." Kara breathed, walking side by side with Lena along the rest of the corridor to the door to her apartment. They were only a few paces away when they heard the first shriek.

Kara quickly reddened, because she'd been here before, and had walked in on something she'd rather have just _not_.  
"Maybe we should go and come back later!" Kara burbled, mushing each word together as her face flamed. Lena giggled.  
"That wasn't a sex noise, babe. I can tell." She teased, and if it was even possible Lena would say that Kara went even redder. As if on cue, however, they heard some kind of 'thunk' from the apartment, and a loud "Screw you, Sawyer!!" followed by an even louder "I warned you, Danvers! Come at me!!"  
And Kara's first reaction was panic, because shit, Maggie and Alex were having a fight! And she'd been so caught up in her problems with Mon-El and his emotional abuse that she'd missed the pointers that Alex and Maggie were maybe abusive too, and she couldn't imagine either of them doing anything to hurt each other but still she was taking Alex's apartment key from her pocket and slamming it into the door with almost enough force to break it off its hinges anyway, and Lena was just behind her trying to calm her but Kara couldn't hear her, couldn't hear her because someone was being hurt and someone was hurting and she was so _frightened_.

She flung the door open and raced into the room, just in time to narrowly miss a soft bullet flying across it. And then she took in the sight of Alex stood on a kitchen stool, her head nearly touching the ceiling, holding the toy gun in her hands in a way that showed she was trying to angle a bullet so that it could hit Maggie, who crouched behind the sofa holding her own gun. There were pillows strewn everywhere, and soft bullets too. Both Maggie and Alex were panting, hair slightly stuck to their skin with sweat, wide eyed in shock as they regarded Kara, who had burst in as if ready to engage in a fistfight with the first person she encountered. And then there was Lena, stood in the doorway, desperate to reach out for Kara because since Mon-El she had been so sensitive to any kind of abuse, and she knew it scared her.  
"Kara, you're early?" Alex asked, stepping down from her stool. She had seen Lena stood there, but Kara looked so distraught and confused that she had to be her priority.  
"What's wrong?" She asked, wrapping Kara in her arms. Maggie gestured for Lena to come in, so Lena stepped through the door, closing it gently behind her. Kara sobbed into Alex's shoulder, relief coursing through her.  
"I- I thought tha-that you and Maggie were hurting each other." She choked through tears, and Alex understood immediately, holding her sister tighter still.  
"It's okay, Kara. You're okay."  
"Kara I would never hurt Alex. We're okay." Maggie cooed, and Kara felt all of the adrenaline slowly leaving her system, felt the arms of her sister around her. They stayed like that for so long, Alex just slightly rocking Kara until the hiccups subsided and the sniffles dried up.  
"I'm not early. We agreed to meet up at 5?" Kara pointed out, wiping tears away with her sleeve as she pulled away from Alex. She began looking around for Lena, and when she spotted her stood right next to Maggie, went and nestled into her instead. Alex seemed oblivious to the gesture, deeming it friendly enough, but Lena could see the cogs turning in Maggie's head.  
"Yeah, and its 4 right now?" Maggie frowned, gesturing to Alex's wall clock.  
"The clocks went forward last night." Lena supplied, and both Alex and Maggie groaned.  
"I told you to remember that last weekend, Danvers!" Maggie exclaimed, and Alex shoved her gently.  
"Cut it, Sawyer, you completely forgot too!" She shot back, and Kara smiled, slowly realising that this was the type of banter and blaming that way typical in a relationship. Always light, always smiling, never accusing. Not like Mon-El had done. Because she could see the love and laughter in their eyes as they called each other 'idiots' and 'daylight-saving-forgetting-maniacs' and none of the anger or disdain she had seen in his.  
"What do you guys actually want to do, anyway? We've got a good selection of films we can watch if we reassemble the sofa?" Maggie suggested after a moment of playful bickering. Kara mused for a moment, before her eyes lit up.  
"Have you got any more nerf guns?" Kara asked, grinning as Alex and Maggie exchanged glances.  
"That depends... you in, Luthor?"  
"Like flynn, Sawyer." Lena smirked, kicking her high heels off without elegance. Kara barely concealed an excited squeal as Maggie ran off to the bedroom.

\---

"Oh, you will pay for that, Danvers!" Lena yelled, vaulting over the sofa persuit of Alex who had just tried to launch a shot at her.  
"That's what you think, Luthor!" Maggie called from across the room, a shot from her gun barely missing Lena's head. Alex cackled as Kara blocked her escape, but a well aimed shot to her cheek deterred her.  
"You're a pretty shitty shot for a cop, Sawyer!" Lena teased, earning a wink in reply from Maggie.  
"Rude!" Kara huffed disdainfully as Alex joined Maggie in their stronghold behind the kitchen counter, because _of course_ they'd gotten into teams. All of a sudden they were rushing out from behind it, and Lena and Kara were squealing as they dashed in opposite directions, and they must have decided to target Lena because they were pelting her with shots, and Lena was crying with laughter because she'd never done anything like this in her life.  
"Stop bullying my girlfriend, you heathens!!" Kara cried gleefully, before realising what she'd said, clapping her hand over her mouth. And in seconds, the atmosphere changed, and there was silence. And all of a sudden Maggie was crying with laughter, already doubled up on the floor, and Alex was cursing.  
"Now I owe her $50!" Alex yelled, but she was grinning, crossing the room to Kara, frozen in shock and terror, and hugging her so tight.

"I am so proud of you." She whispered, and Lena couldn't help but grin as she watched Kara almost melt in relief in Alex's arms. And then Maggie's hand was on her shoulder, and Lena was shocked for a second, but Maggie was smiling and mouthing 'thank you'. And Lena didn't need to ask, because these sisters were really something else. And then Alex was hugging Lena, and whispering "welcome to the family" because it didn't take an idiot to know that anyone who offered their love as freely as Lena did to Kara deserved to be considered their family. And at first it seemed premature, but over 4 years later, on their wedding day, when Kara and Lena were flicking through the scrapbook that Alex and Maggie had gifted them, and they found a blurry picture of Kara, Lena and Alex all firing bullets at each other that Maggie had taken from their 'base', she realised that she'd felt like family since that very day. And the book was full of subsequent nerf wars between pictures of Lena and Kara as Alex and Maggie's bridesmaids, and pictures of random other trips. There were pictures with all four of them because Winn had taken it, and then ones also including James, Lyra, Eliza and J'onn, because they had become one huge family, and nobody had ever made Lena question her part in it.

When Alex finally released Lena, Lena was almost crying. But then Kara's arms were around her, and she actually was crying, because she'd never felt so loved or loved so hard in her life. And when the crying finally finished, Kara gently kissed Lena's cheek and whispered something that neither Alex nor Maggie could hear. And they expected it to be words of love or comfort, but when both girls knelt down as quick as anything and retrieved their weapons, firing endless bullets at both Alex and Maggie, the screaming and yelling quickly returned.  
"Mutiny!" Alex cried, diving for her gun and returning the fire. Maggie catapaulted over the sofa for hers, and quickly joined back in. And none of the four girls really knew what the years to come would bring, but they each hoped that they would have moments like this for the rest of their lives, because they _deserved_ this.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed! As you can tell, I am still one very salty gay about 2x13 and the whole 'Karamel' bullshit arc. I would write a fix-it fic but I am emotionally incapacitated and would rather just shit on Manhell from some point in the future tbh. 
> 
> I grew up in an emotionally, verbally and sometimes physically abusive household, and I guess it's still emotionally abusive now since I came out as gay. I am strongly triggered by loud noises such as plates being slammed heavily on to a table, so I drew a lot of Kara's feelings from my experiences. Abuse isn't cool, folks, and Karamel is a shitty ship for condoning it. 
> 
> Anyway, you can find me on tumblr @toolatetogobacktosleep, or twitter @ascreaminggay. I love people to come and yell at me so please feel free to do that. Unless you ship Karamel. Then you can choke.
> 
> Kudos and Comments are so greatly valued I can't even begin to tell you. Thanks for reading!


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